Electric birefringence of recombinant spectrin segments 14, 14-15, 14-16, and 14-17 from Drosophila alpha-spectrin.

Members of the spectrin protein family can be found in many different cells and organisms. In all cases studied, the major functional role of these proteins is believed to be structural rather than enzymatic. All spectrin proteins are highly elongated and consist mainly of homologous repeats that constitute rigid segments connected in tandem. It is commonly believed that the details of the spectrin function depend critically on the flexibility of the links between the segments. Here we report on a work addressing this question by studying the transient electric birefringence of recombinant spectrin fragments consisting of segments 14, 14-15, 14-16, and 14-17, respectively, from Drosophila alpha-spectrin. Transient electric birefringence depends sharply on both molecular length and flexibility. We found that the birefringence relaxation time of segment 14 measured at 4 degrees C, but scaled to what is expected at 20 degrees C, equals 16 ns (+/-15%) at pH 7.5 and ionic strength 6 mM. This is consistent with this single segment being rigid, 5 nm long and having an axial ratio equal to about two. Under the same conditions, segments 14-15, 14-16 and 14-17 show relaxation times of 45, 39 and 164 ns (all +/-20%), respectively, scaled to what is expected at 20 degrees C. When the temperature is increased to 37 degrees C the main relaxation time for each of these multisegment fragments, scaled to what is expected at 20 degrees C, increased to 46, 80, and 229 ns (all +/-20%), respectively. When the ionic strength and the Debye shielding is low, the dynamics of these short fragments even at physiological temperature is nearly the same as for fully extended weakly bending rods with the same lengths and axial ratios. When the ionic strength is increased to 85 mM, the main relaxation time for each of these multisegment fragments is reduced 20-50% which suggests that at physiological salt and temperature conditions the links in 2-4-segment-long fragments exhibit significant thermally induced flexing. Provided that the recombinant spectrin fragments can serve as a model for native spectrin, this implies that, at physiological conditions, the overall conformational dynamics of a native spectrin protein containing 20-40 segments equals that of a flexible polymer.